By Michael Shepherd - March 23, 2023
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📷 State Sen. Jill Duson, D-Portland, is pictured as a city councilor on Jan. 31, 2018. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Hello from Augusta. The Legislature is in for the State of the Judiciary speech from Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill of Maine's high court. Here's the long committee agenda to follow.

What we're watching today

A flavored tobacco ban rides a hard path again through the Maine Legislature. After narrowly failing in 2021 to get a flavored tobacco ban into the state budget, advocates are back this year in an attempt to build on local bans passed in four cities and towns, including Bangor and South Portland.

This year's bill, sponsored by Sen. Jill Duson, D-Portland, is identical to the one from two years ago. It would prohibit the sale and distribution of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, e-cigarettes and flavored cigars, taking a tack similar to those local bans.

While it is probably supported by a majority of the Democratic-led Legislature with Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, and House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, on board, it also faces some familiar obstacles. In early 2023, some rural Democrats showed some reservations about a ban.

Convenience stores will fight it hard, as will legislative Republicans after they got a ban supported by Gov. Janet Mills out of a revised state budget nearly two years ago. The co-sponsor list includes two Republicans: Reps. Scott Cyrway of Albion and Tammy Schmersal-Burgess of Mexico. But it also had two Republican co-sponsors last time.

The format of this year's spending plan is up in the air while Democrats and Republicans negotiate over whether the majority party will run a budget of their own in the next week or so. That process is crucial, since Republicans will maintain veto power over the ban if the Legislature sticks with a normal process in which two-thirds votes are required to pass the budget immediately.

The price tag is not exactly small. The state estimated a tax revenue hit of nearly $23 million per year under a ban, a gap that would have to be accounted for in the budget for the law to take effect.

Conservative groups have cited Massachusetts' revenue dip and an initial increase in New Hampshire and Rhode Island revenues in arguments against the bill, although a recent report from a Bay State regulator noted that revenues have declined since then in a sign that the market may be smoothing out. The groups championing the ban have made a health and workforce argument.

"This is a preventive measure so more young people do not get addicted," Duson said in a statement this week. "It has an overwhelmingly negative impact on their health, their wellbeing, and our collective workforce."

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News and notes

📷 Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives, including Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor (bottom), look up to see how their colleagues voted on a heating assistance package on Jan. 4, 2023, at the State House in Augusta. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

🦞 A push to fund Maine's lobster legal fight gets wide support.

◉ During the lobster industry's legal wrangling with the federal government over lobstering limits last year, House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, was able to pass a bill starting a legal defense fund but not before appropriators stripped the $1 million in funding from the measure. Watch a public hearing on the measure at 1 p.m.

◉ Faulkingham is looking to add that money back this year in an effort supported by Jackson and Talbot Ross. The money would come from the state budget and not from industry fees, which drew initial opposition from the Mills administration in 2022.

◉ The heat is off to a degree in the fight over rules aimed at protecting endangered whales after Maine's congressional delegation won a six-year pause in a spending bill late last year, but the case continues.

◉ Under the current draft of Faulkingham's measure, the state money would only be used to fight the federal government and not in a new defamation lawsuit against a conservation group that red-listed Maine lobsters.

🥊 The state wants a labor complaint from the employees' union dismissed.

◉ The Mills administration asked the Maine Labor Relations Board to toss a complaint from the Maine Service Employees Association, the top union representing state workers, in a rebuttal filed on Tuesday. Read it.

◉ The union, which is aligned with Democrats and represents roughly 9,000 state workers, complained that the top state negotiator was illegally trying to restrict its bargaining team. The sides have not begun negotiations, but the union is preparing to open them with a large pay increase proposal.

◉ The state's rebuttal counters the union by saying the union is not negotiating in good faith and is using the complaint as "a public relations tool to politically charge the bargaining atmosphere."

◉ "The State is willing, prepared, and looking forward to expeditiously beginning good faith negotiations for successor agreements with MSEA and its contractually-defined bargaining team, just as it has done for decades prior," the state said.

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What we're reading

🧊 There's an early Republican split in talks on changing a tax-freeze program.

⚡ Maine's aging grid puts renewable energy projects at risk.

❗A superintendent allegedly victim tampered in her son's domestic violence case.

🛐 Portland's new homeless shelter will be full on the first day.

🦝 Raccoons are Maine's top source of rabies exposure. Here's your soundtrack.

📇 On the BDN's Op-Ed pages, the only Maine Democrat to oppose a Ukraine resolution explains her vote.

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